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> Gladwell is successful because he tells so many people what they want to hear: your lack of talent doesn't matter. Actually, I thought he told people somethi
by yungchin 17y ago
> Gladwell is successful because he tells so many people what they want to hear: your lack of talent doesn't matter.
Actually, I thought he told people something they really don't want to hear: your superb talents don't mean a thing unless you straighten up and put in your 10k hours. It's a matter of perspective ;)
- wakeupthedawn 17y agoRight, because that's clearly what's driving sales of Outliers. Telling a small group of people what they might not want to hear as opposed to telling a large group of people what they want to hear.
- Sukotto 17y agoI find it really interesting that so many people hear what they want to hear in his talks. People on both sides of the talent vs hard-work debate are posting here using his books and lectures as support. Personally, I'm in the "work matters more than talent" camp. so of course, that's what I remember from his work :-) [edit: clarification]
- mos1 17y agoI read it as an argument that to reach truly obscene, globally recognizable levels of achievement, you need talent, determination, discipline, and luck. It kind of makes sense if you think about it, since achievement typically has a log-normal distribution with a long right-hand tail, which implies that it's based on multiple normally distributed underlying factors. Take away any one of the factors, and you rapidly approach more "normal" levels of achievement.